Reflection: Iconography & Care Labels

We don’t have to go very far to find icons. Even looking outside my screens, I was able to find plenty of icons on my appliances, bathroom products, and more. One set of icons that I wanted to look into is the care instruction icons on your clothes. Why? Because no one knows what these actually mean. They’re literally all the same (or very close) on every tag no matter where your garment was made. How are these icons so universal and yet there is so much confusion around these? Maybe it’s just me because I’m trying to be a real adult so this is for my own education too.

The Basics: Apparently there is some reasoning and imagery behind each of the icons.

1. Washing instructions feature a washtub. I guess I could have figured that one out.
2. Drying instructions feature a circle enclosed in a square meant to symbolize a drying machine. Yes, another obvious one though the very simple use of two shapes here is very effective.
3. Ironing instructions are probably the easiest because they literally show an iron.
4. Bleaching instructions are mainly differentiated by the use of a triangle. This is the one that kills me. Why a triangle? My sole guess is that it looks like a beaker (and beakers = chemicals) and even that revelation is only thanks to the Japanese tag I found (see below).
5. Lines or dots included in the icon usually indicate the intensity for certain instructions (in temperature or agitation for example).

These main icons draw on their resemblance to the actual machine so they work really well. The best one by far is the iron — nothing else in my mind is shaped like an iron. Whereas for the dryer I had to think a little harder because, yes, it looks like a front loading washer, but also, it’s just a square and a circle (and when there are dots in it with no other context on my tag, I have no clue).

A breakdown of care label icons and what they mean.

The Good: Globally, most countries use the same care symbols. They’re simple outlines, 2D, and every country uses the same elements for the same meaning (dots, lines). On the left is a tag from Japan and on the right is one from the UK (I promise. It spells colors as “colours”.)

The Japanese tag on the left is the sole reason I finally know why the bleaching symbol is a triangle.

The Bad: Perhaps what makes them so confusing is that no clothing tag ever has room for the written meaning of each symbol. The first piece of clothing where you actually look at the tag, you’re just left to guess (or at least Google if you’re really concerned about your clothes).

Bonus: Yes, I did research

Did you know that these symbols were first used in the care labeling system in 1963 and can be traced back to Switzerland? These symbols were developed in Europe as textiles became increasingly blended with synthetic fibers. Verbal care information was no longer adequate with the explosion in manufacturing techniques that produced such a range of textiles. Additionally, with washing machines and tumble-dryers getting onto the market, there were many ways to care for garments. In the 1970s, the USA, Canada, and Japan all started developing similar symbol systems and to avoid parallel development, an international organization attempted to standardize care labels. This is part of the reason care labels are so similar across the globe with very minute stylistic differences. And there’s everything you never wanted to know about care labels :)